104-year-old buddhist monk celebrates birthday in Shenzhen

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Daily Sunshine, October 28, 2010

A centenarian buddhist monk’s birthday has drawn large number of followers to Shenzhen’s Hongfa Temple, today’s Daily Sunshine reports.

According to the article, Monk Benhuan, the 104-year-old founding abbot monk of Hongfa Temple is both a highly achieved buddhist master as well as a generous philanthropist, who has raised hundreds of millions of yuan to help the poor and build more temples.

Monk Benhuan’s legendary spiritual accomplishments includes holding a meditation that lasted 91 days without falling asleep in his youth; locking himself up in a temple for seven years and spending an entire year pilgriming from Baoding to Wutai Mountain, kowtowing to bodhisattva every three steps.

All these are perhaps not as remarkable as his eidetic memory. According to his disciple Monk Yinshun, Monk Benhuan once recognized a visitor who visited him five years ago at 16. That goes without saying that the famous monk has tens of thousands of visitors everyday asking him for blessing.

Among these blessing seekers, there are no shortage of important government officials and successful businesspeople but they are treated no differently. Monk Benhuan would tap a stick or a folding fan on their heads while chanting: “Fortune, fortune, make a big fortune; promotion, promotion, have a big promotion.”

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